Traditionally, a pizza shell has been formed by pressing, kneading and stretching a ball of proofed dough into a relatively thin shell with a relatively thick rim. Generally, efforts to mechanize the process of kneading dough for pizza shells have not been successful in that they do not effect the manipulations of the human fingers. Some such processes involve passing the dough through a pair of rollers arranged in the nature of a washing machine wringer. Any gas pockets in the dough tend to be flattened and ruptured and the pizza shell is not light and fluffy but are rather, flat and uninteresting. A hand operated roller configured to similate hand kneading and shaping of a pizza shell has been disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,815,859 for "Roller For Making Pizza Shell". The roller there illustrated and described has a plurality of rounded knobs arranged in staggered rows around the cylindrical surface. However, such knobs are not closely nested and are generally not suitable for an automated production line for pizza shells wherein a dough ball may be completely formed, stretched, kneaded and reduced in thickness to the desired degree in a single pass of the dough under the roller.